Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Day by day there’s more evidence that AI is eating up the media world. A recent report from Growtika, a self-described SEO and AI search agency, analyzed data from the search analytics platform Ahrefs to show that traffic to many tech media sites is way down over the past couple of years. Hardest hit were Digital Trends (down 97%), ZDNet (down 90%), and The Verge (down 85%). Even the most seemingly resilient publications (Mashable was down only 30% and CNET 47%, both Ziff-Davis properties) took significant hits. Some of these reductions are no doubt exaggerated—Growtika compared each publication’s peak month with traffic in January 2026, which doesn’t account for seasona…

By now you may have heard about the so-called “Gen Z pout,” a selfie face pose that comes as a response to the now “cringe” millennial duck face made popular by the Olsen twins in the 2000s, who would purse their lips to look pouty and suck in their cheeks when posing. Here’s what to know about the newest Gen Z slang. What exactly is the Gen Z pout? This week, a bunch of articles came out about this new trend and the nuances surrounding it that the untrained eye might miss. The pose has been seen on the faces of celebs such as Love Island’s Iris Kendall, or actresses Rachel Sennott, Lily-Rose Depp and Ariana Greenblatt. “If millennials pursed and pointed ou…

Innovation isn’t a spark—it’s a sustained pursuit. Meet Google, Proximity Media, Google, Reddit, Unwell and Tubi—the teams turning bold vision into daily discipline, redefining what it takes to lead, create, and stay ahead. View the full article

A New Mexico jury determined Tuesday that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms, a verdict that signals a changing tide against tech companies and the government’s willingness to crack down. The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial, and as jurors in a federal court in California have been sequestered in deliberations for more than a week about whether Meta and YouTube should be liable in a similar case. New Mexico jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — prioritized profits over safety, and v…

Your performance at work today has a lot to do with how you spent your time after work yesterday. It’s not just about putting down the devices at a decent hour and having a consistent bedtime routine. New research suggests we can take steps to optimize tomorrow’s performance as soon as work ends today. According to the study, mentally detaching from work earlier in the day—and not thinking about it for the rest of the evening—leads to more energy, less fatigue, and higher work-goal accomplishment the following day. “It’s critical that you start your recovery as soon as you can,” says lead author Ryan Grant, an assistant professor of psychological science at …

Most of the markets are down today after President The President’s address to the nation last night failed to alleviate fears about America’s war with Iran dragging on. But one relatively small tech company is bucking the downward trend in premarket trading this morning: Globalstar. The satellite communications company is reportedly an acquisition target for Amazon, yet its relationship with Apple could complicate any potential deal. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Shares in the relatively small satellite communications company Globalstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: GSAT) are rising today after a Financial Times report yesterday said the ecommerce giant A…

Not long ago, fractional executives were an edge case—temporary operators invited to fill a short-term gap at the leadership table. But what started as a cost-savvy strategy for cash-conscious startups is now a mainstream, strategic move for companies and executives alike. Fractional leaders are self-employed individuals who are focused on solving specific challenges. They offer domain expertise and the ability to move quickly inside of shorter decision-making cycles. They’re perfect for businesses that need senior-level strategic thinking—but not necessarily for forty-plus hours a week. (It’s also worth distinguishing between interim and fractional leadership. I…

For too long, design has been too focused on how things look. That makes sense when products are competing for attention. Form becomes a way to stand out, a signal of taste, a shortcut to desire. But it’s fleeting. A shopper may feel good at checkout, then realize later that the product doesn’t actually enhance her life. That’s a failure. Most products don’t fail because they look bad. They fail because they don’t hold up in real life. They’re hard to open, awkward to carry, confusing to use, fine in ideal conditions but frustrating everywhere else. As a society, we’ve been designing for the moment of purchase, not the reality of use, and not for the long term. Re…

After traveling deeper into space than any other humans, the Artemis II astronauts pointed their moonship toward home Monday night, wrapping up a lunar cruise that revealed views of the far side never beheld by eyes until now. Their flyby of the moon — NASA’s first return since the Apollo era — even included some celestial sightseeing besides yielding rich science. It was a significant step toward landing boot prints near the moon’s south pole in just two years. A total solar eclipse greeted the three Americans and one Canadian as the moon temporarily blocked the sun from their perspective. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn nodded at them from the black void. The landing …

Facing stagnant sales, Panera Bread is aiming to become one of the restaurant industry’s rare comeback stories. The fast-casual chain’s latest move is the introduction of new “Salad Stuffers,” a fresh spin on one of Panera Bread’s most iconic menu items: the bread bowl. Instead of filling a sourdough bread bowl with soup, however, it’s stuffing a handheld Italian-style roll with salad. The idea sounds simple enough, and yet CEO Paul Carbone says Panera thoroughly tested the innovation before adding it to the menu. A team of chefs and bakers experimented with 20 different breads to find one with the desired “fluffy and soft” texture. Any salad on Panera’s menu,…

As a teenager, my Sony Walkman was my most treasured possession. It was a portal to another world that let me consume music in industrial quantities. By the early 1990s, it wasn’t new—Sony invented it in the late ’70s—yetit still held incredible power. Sony sold more than 220 million units globally. When one died, often from overuse, I’d use a birthday or Christmas present to upgrade it, usually with a trip to an electronics store with my Dad. Those places felt mythical. That feeling came flooding back when I visited a big-box electronics store with my kids. Retail is under pressure as e-commerce reshapes how we shop. But my overriding thought was: where did the e…

Delta just unveiled the new version of its most premium seat, and it’s designed to let passengers stretch out just like they would in their bed at home. On April 13, the company announced that the “next generation” of its Delta One suites, which are made for long-haul international and domestic flights, will debut in early 2027 on new Airbus A350-1000 aircraft. The updated design will include a flat bed that’s been expanded by more than three inches, a custom cushion to act like an in-air mattress, and a new cubby to store shoes. Delta’s announcement comes just weeks after United (the second-largest airline by revenue behind only Delta itself) officially debuted its ne…

For all the sketches, concepts, and slick imagery coming from the minds of designers in the car industry, the production cars that end up on roads around the world are shaped most significantly by aerodynamics. How smoothly a vehicle can cut through the air has major implications for its fuel efficiency, and in the era of electric vehicles, it can greatly offset the weight of a battery and increase the overall range. But the aerodynamic analyses car designers rely on are excruciatingly slow. “We’ll release a design surface, and then it can take days or weeks to get a full set of analysis back on the performance of that surface,” says Bryan Styles, director of desi…

The first sign that something had changed was the Topo Chico. It arrived on our porch one afternoon—a case of it—along with Graza olive oil and La Roche-Posay face wash. When our 4-year-old announced she would eat nothing but Uncrustables for the foreseeable future, a box arrived within the hour. The prices were lower than on Amazon, and we got them faster, with no delivery fee. It turns out that my husband had gotten hooked on Walmart—all without ever setting foot in a store. Earlier this year, he discovered that our American Express card included a Walmart+ membership. He activated it on a whim. Since then, he’s been placing orders on the app almost daily, from go-to g…

If you’re self-employed and spend any time on social media, you’ve seen the debate. One person swears you need a professional website from day one. Another says a logo is the first thing to invest in. Someone else is selling a $500 course that promises to “elevate your brand’s presence.” Everyone has an opinion about where your money should go first (and they’re usually selling whatever they’re recommending). I’ve been running my own business for three years. I’ve run the branding gamut from DIY templates in Canva to hiring a professional brand designer. Here’s what I’ve learned: the right branding investment depends entirely on where your business is toda…

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers didn’t mince words in court this week while adjudicating the ongoing trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI in Oakland, California. Musk and Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, needed to stop being messy bitches. While she didn’t put it like that (she advised both men: “Control your propensity to use social media to make things worse outside this courtroom”), the underlying message was clear. The fact that the case even made it to court is indication enough of how strongly both men feel about one another. Social media name-calling is hardly necessary to make that plain. But the reason they’re so eager to throw digital barbs at each other stems from …

Chili’s has had a major comeback in recent years. The casual dining chain turned 50 last year, and recently reported 20 consecutive quarters of growth. Chili’s CEO Kevin Hochman told Business Insider that the success of the chain boils down to two things: marketing and operations. “We have a saying here: marketing brings them in, and ops brings them back,” Hochman told BI. Hochman shared this sentiment with analysts and investors during an earnings call with investors last year. It’s clear the Tex-Mex chain has continued to lean in on that strategy. “The marketing has to be exciting,” Hochman said. “And then the operators are in charge of creating that ex…

Judging by a slew of recent corporate announcements, your next “co-worker” might be an artificial intelligence agent—doing the work of an assistant, job scheduler, morning debriefer, learning coach and more. JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, describes a clear vision for a new world of omnipresent AI agents: “Every employee will have their own personalized AI assistant; every process is powered by AI agents, and every client experience has an AI concierge.” In brick-and-mortar retail, Walmart is already implementing its vision around agents, which involves support of customers, in-store employees and other business areas, with supervisor agents assigning tasks…

If you’re a sports fan on TikTok, you’ve almost certainly heard the song “Orla” by the British DJ and producer Nimino. Since its release in early March, the song has soundtracked nearly 150,000 videos on the platform. For Nimino, that doesn’t just mean more exposure for his music. It means money. A lot of the sports-world accounts that have used his track are businesses—Atlético de Madrid, the “Men in Blazers” podcast, Major League Baseball, the LPGA, and the Philadelphia Eagles—that accessed the song via TikTok’s growing Commercial Music Library (CML), which ensures artists are paid when their music is used commercially. The library offers the plat…

There are many ways to measure the success of CompanyCam, a Lincoln, Nebraska-based startup unicorn that popularized a photo-focused construction tracking app that’s become popular within the roofing industry. But one of the clearest signs that its design, utility, and functionality are hitting the mark is the variety of users the app continues to attract. There are shipbuilders who use it to track how vessels are built and to certify the strength of a hull. Retail merchandisers love the ability to showcase product setups and track subcontractors. Property managers use it to oversee buildings. “We have some aestheticians—which I think our terms of service say th…

Oops, it happened again. A celebrity was asked what they think about artificial intelligence and, after sharing their reflections, received intense blowback on social media. The latest such case is Demi Moore, who is currently serving on the jury for the Cannes Film Festival. At a May 12 press conference meant to introduce the broader film event, Moore was asked by a journalist about AI, its impact on Hollywood, and potential regulation. “I always feel ‘againstness’ breeds ‘againstness.’ AI is here,” Moore responded, clearly thinking on the spot. Rather than fight a “losing” battle, Moore suggested that artists figure out how to “work with” the technology. This, s…

Below, Laura Vanderkam shares five key insights from her new book, Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance. Laura is the author of several time management books and the host of the Before Breakfast podcast. She is also the host of the Best of Both Worlds podcast, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Fortune. What’s the big idea? What if you’re not actually “too busy,” but just missing the secret to making your time work for you? By tracking your hours, embracing small steps, and saying yes to what excites you, you can turn everyday life into something far more intentional and a lot more fun. Listen to…

Organizations invest in setting the right goals to drive strategy, and increasingly they’re using AI to help. To be sure, AI can support the mechanics: draft objectives, align to strategy, track progress. But the questions that determine whether you can deliver on a goal, sustainably, aren’t ones an algorithm can answer: Are you clear on the target? Do you know why it matters? Is it realistic given your capacity? Too often, employees take on goals without asking these questions, and the result is unfocused, empty effort or burnout. The fix isn’t an AI agent—it’s having a smarter, human conversation before you commit. Next time your manager asks you to take on a new in…

In a recent survey of senior leaders at large U.S. and U.K. professional services firms, 61% said they had abandoned at least one AI project in the past year because their people lacked the skills to deliver it. Deloitte’s “2026 State of AI in the Enterprise” report, based on a survey of more than 3,200 business and IT leaders across 24 countries, found that insufficient worker skills are now the single “biggest barrier to integrating AI into the business.” There is no quick or easy solution to this problem. While it is possible to bring in new hires or contractors with the short-term capabilities you need, this approach is not sustainable in the long term as it is both …

A decade of light-night history is closing out this week, with Stephen Colbert’s tenure as the host for “The Late Show” coming to an end on Thursday. Filmed in the Ed Sullivan Theater, The Late Show is CBS’s flagship late night talk show, first airing in 1993 with David Letterman hosting. Colbert first joined the show in 2015 following successful stints at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, with his political monologues during the first The President administration helping grow his popularity, particularly among more liberal viewers. His vocal critique of The President is also seen by many as precipitating the end of his hosting duties. CBS parent company P…